The three best things that happened to me yesterday happened before 6:30am: 1) a line in a poem that wouldn’t come right seemed like it would; 2) I thought of a way to return to a writing project that I keep abandoning; and 3) my 4-year old son walked into the kitchen in his penguin pajamas with his armload of sleeping paraphenalia and said, “Hello there, my friend.”

And I knew that no matter what else happened that day, it would have been a good day. Those three things would never not have happened; nothing could make them unhappen.

Then a little sunburst of happiness opened inside my chest and I remembered something my friend Amy often says, and each time she says it, it’s like Ground Hog Day, because I have to keep learning it over and over and over again: “It’s all about the gratitude.”

So it’s a short little piece today, an excerpt from a much longer poem by George Herbert (1593-1633), Welsh poet and Anglican priest:

“Blest be the God of love
Who gave me eyes, and light, and power this day,
Both to be busy and to play.”